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(Genuine Q): Why are people - or even just HN readers - really so interested in living longer? Both my father and my father-in-law have dementia. My father's

(Genuine Q): Why are people - or even just HN readers - really so interested in living longer? Both my father and my father-in-law have dementia. My father's dementia is fairly advanced (he doesn't know who I am and hasn't for a while, there are times where he doesn't know who my mother is) although he's still living at home. My father-in-law's dementia is less advanced although he's much more frail as he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, had it removed, so has ended up with the whole tubes+bags "solution". My OH and I were discussing this for the Nth time last week. Apologies for being blunt, but our current perspective is this: try make your life count, and hope for it to end cleanly. Via Dignitas, if necessary. There is no way I want to see out my final years in the way that my father or my father-in-law are doing now :(

barrucadu 2y ago
Obviously the idea is to live longer with good mental and physical health. There's no point in living longer if your faculties are too degraded to enjoy it, you may as well just be dead.
- Jach 2y ago
  I guess it's not so obvious if GP is the top comment. It seems broader messaging around anti-aging needs to be even better (nothing against the paper). Sometimes I like the jargon of negligible senescence and longevity escape velocity, because I don't think it's possible to know the meaning of those phrases and also think the goal is eking out as much substandard life as possible, so if you can't have a two-way conversation at least you can put in a semantic roadblock that invites a curious reader to look up the meaning and then not have the GP's question.
ceejayoz 2y ago
I mean, we want to live longer and not get dementia. I wanna know what happens. I want to download my brain into a computer and see what humanity does over the next couple million years.
- highwaylights 2y ago
  Even if that were possible, and theoretically we could take the entirety of a person's brain and emulate every synapse into digital storage, along with enough compute to run everything (which is a massive hurdle to overcome), would it really still be you? I kind of think about it a bit like the transporter deck from Star Trek. Are those people really travelling somewhere else or are they getting cloned and then done like Hugh Jackman at the end of The Prestige? How would anyone even know? A computer simulated you would seem like you to everyone else, but you'd already be gone.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > How would anyone even know? If no one can ever know, I'm not sure I care. Transport me to cool places all you like.
  - incongruity 2y ago
    Worse, still, unless the current me blinks out of existence, "old me" will still be around - unless we can replace neurons in-place with computational analogs, the original me is destined to die, almost no matter what, even if a copy/download is made. From the download's perspective, it continues, but the original, if not ended then and there, still faces a grim end and will know it.
    - ceejayoz 2y ago
      If painless (or I don't remember it), I'm 100% fine with a fairly speedy destructive upload process.
      - highwaylights 2y ago
        You won't remember it as you'll cease to exist at all is the point.
        ceejayoz 2y ago
        My consciousness gets interrupted on a nightly basis. One more will be fine.
rileymat2 2y ago
I am not sure if it would map to dementia, but: > The results highlighted a significant slowing of aging indicators, notably a roughly 6-year regression in brain aging. And some people call Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes. So there could be something protective?
- transitionnel 2y ago
  Diabetes causes rupturing of small blood vessels, which has been seen in eyes and feet. It would follow that the same is happening in the brain and an anti-diabetic medicine would directly improve brain longevity in affected individuals. *I am not a doctor, but also I can correlate data without bias.
non- 2y ago
The exciting thing about these findings is not that the monkey's live longer, it's that their brains aged slower. --- Highlights: • Metformin prevents brain atrophy, elevating cognitive function in aged male primates • Metformin slows the pace of aging across diverse male primate tissues • Metformin counterparts neuronal aging, delivering geroprotection via Nrf2 in male primates
- iwontberude 2y ago
  • Metformin-associated lactic acidosis has an estimated death rate of up to 50%.
  - giardini 2y ago
    So... don't overdose?
    - iwontberude 2y ago
      It can build up over time and requires regular blood work.
tempestn 2y ago
As others said, obviously the goal is to live longer in good health. As for why, because.. I like living. Why would I not want to do it for longer?
dangus 2y ago
People want more healthy years.
- logifail 2y ago
  > People want more healthy years ...but that doesn't really answer why, does it? To "do more stuff"? To "see more things"? To "earn more money"? To "learn more"? Why? A friend wasn't enjoying her job a year or two ago and said she felt seriously underpaid for the stuff she was being asked to handle. I asked her if she would feel any happier if they doubled or tripled her salary. After thinking about it she realised the amount of money wouldn't fix the problem, the issue was with the work environment, not the monetary package tagged on to her employment. Life is finite. So at least for all of us who don't have some desperately unkind medical issue that specifically shortens it, maybe we need to take a deep breath and learn to deal with that. "Carpe diem", and all that.
  - jjk166 2y ago
    > To "do more stuff"? To "see more things"? To "earn more money"? To "learn more"? Why? Yes, to all of it. Life will still be finite with a longer life, but more is more. If offered the opportunity to have your lifespan shortened for no gain would you take it? Obviously not, and likewise if you have the opportunity to increase your lifespan for no cost, it's exactly the same decision.
  - dangus 2y ago
    Learning to deal with mortality and wanting more healthy years are not mutually exclusive. I can’t really think of any downside to having more healthy years. Yeah, do more stuff, see more things, learn more. Why? Because it’s enjoyable. And why do I need a reason?
switchbak 2y ago
The people in this space talk a lot about not just life span, but health span. I don't know anyone who wants to suffer for a long time, of course we'd want to live well. I know for myself, I'd love to be around to watch my kids grow up. Even better if I can do that while being old-man jacked and physically capable enough to still enjoy life. I don't think this has to mean that you're putting off enjoying life in the current moment though. It seems like a funny question to ask who's "interested in living longer"? Taken to an extreme that's a pretty depression question.
- a13n 2y ago
  Survival instinct is deeply hard wired into all animals, including humans. It's natural to want to continue living. Anti-aging is picking up now because there's a growing belief that significantly extending the healthy human lifespan is within scientific/technological reach.
  - logifail 2y ago
    > Survival instinct is deeply hard wired into all animals, including humans. Survive and reproduce... So if/when one has the reproduction bit out that of the way, the survival bit as such may not seem to be quite as vital. You know your genes are going to survive, meaning you don't personally have to. Which is the whole point of evolution, right?
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      "Which is the whole point of evolution, right?" Pretty much the entire point of civilization is not to be at the mercy of natural forces, including evolution.
      - logifail 2y ago
        > Pretty much the entire point of civilization is not to be at the mercy of natural forces, including evolution The parent to my comment did bring up "survival instinct" (!)
mullingitover 2y ago
The bigger problem with extending lifespans beyond what evolution has optimized for is that you end up competing against your offspring for resources, and you give pathogens a non-moving genetic target to attack (which defeats the whole point of sexual reproduction).
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  "you end up competing against your offspring for resources" This was relevant in the pre-agriculture era. We already live in densities several orders of magnitude higher than evolution optimized us for. I am more concerned about the somewhat artificial societal resources, such as top jobs. We might get a very ossified elite. We almost saw a presidential election with two ancient guys competing. With longevity widespread, this may become a pattern. "you give pathogens a non-moving genetic target to attack" True, but we generally try to manage new infectious diseases by scientific means, not by "0.6 per cent of population is resistant to this, let the rest croak". See: AIDS, Covid.
  - mullingitover 2y ago
    > This was relevant in the pre-agriculture era. We already live in densities several orders of magnitude higher than evolution optimized us for. I mean, keep in mind that we're living in a snapshot of time that's very much not stable or sustainable. It's like we're all embers born in a massive forest fire that started a few days ago. Everything seems normal and stable for us in this situation because our frame of reference is effectively a few seconds. However, this forest fire will eventually consume all the available fuel and things will return to baseline, no matter how hard we fantasize that we're going to somehow spread the forest fire to other planets. Any temporary victories we've made over evolution are just that. We've already seen how absolutely vicious pathogens can be toward monoculture biomasses. Just ask the Gros Michel banana.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      Yeah, of course tomorrow a global plague may eradicate us all, or "all except Sentinelese people". Nevertheless, looking at our prehistory, the worst bottleneck of the human race was probably some 900 thousand years ago, way, way before we had anything resembling civilization. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancestors-may-have-almost-died-out-ancient-population-crash.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancest... So, at least for me, the question of whether we are more resilient as civilization vs. as primitive people in their pristine state, is very much open. Too many people seem to be sure that going with the natural flow is long-term better. But it feels a bit like the Noble Savage myth reiterated for current sensibilities.
fnordpiglet 2y ago
I care more about being healthier longer. And I’d like that to last as long as I can and not a lot longer necessarily. It’s because I love life because it’s life, and wouldn’t mind if it went on for a long time. I could learn so many things. But, even if it’s 60 years I want them to be healthy. So I do the things I am supposed to to age more slowly because aging is causative to ill health. My things I do is eat reasonable amounts of healthy food and exercise regularly. I supplement a few things like magnesium and taurine, that I specifically do better taking than not. But if they came out with a “never age until you die” pill I would take it immediately. But I think you’re confusing long life with long health span. I don’t think anyone dreams of living a long full life is hellish degenerative ill health.
- riehwvfbk 2y ago
  So who will pay for your long healthy life? The default answer is: you will, by working longer. Any other answer has this problem: why is this magic source of funds not currently available to cover even our current shorter lifespans? OK, so we've established that you have to continue working. Are you sure that you as a geriatric man on artificial life extension will be competitive with a younger guy who can go crazy and use the same tech to, say, never sleep - never mind that he'll die at 40? And even if we aren't talking extremes: you as a pill-supported walking corpse have to be ever vigilant of your own mortality. Someone younger can afford to take more risks.
  - daedrdev 2y ago
    Your argument is easily applied to all medical advancements, do you think we should stop using antibiotics? Vaccines? Maybe you should let the individuals determine what's best for themselves instead to trying to prescribe your strange anti capitalism ideology for them. Anyway medical research is focused on giving us on better quality of life as we age, which is what people objectively value, not whatever you think they are trying to do.
    - logifail 2y ago
      > Anyway medical research is focused on giving us on better quality of life as we age Polite correction: medical research is focussed on returns for those funding said research. Treating Americans is definitely a cash-cow for Big Pharma, indeed if a potential new drug can't/won't make it past the FDA then it will likely be killed off regardless of what the rest of the world might want/need/approve. Check out US healthcare spend per capita compared with everywhere else on the planet. (Source: friend in Big Pharma)
willcipriano 2y ago
Are you the sort of person who feels life is awesome? Knowing the name of a assisted suicide company off the top of your head seems to suggest not. If you were, why would you want that to end?
riehwvfbk 2y ago
The people who want to extend their lives are the ones whose lives tend to be pretty good. The CEO plotting world domination kind of archetype. The rest of us are expected to be expendable biorobots who serve them. Unfortunately, this won't play out the way their fantasies tell them. The rich and powerful will be trapped by the need to always maintain their fragile lives. This in turn will slow down progress and open up the gates to a younger and more daring group to come to power.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  This is true. Shifting a populations life expectancy up to suspend biological aging would be a panic moment for most governments that are tied to huge benefit systems based on age. Good luck changing the retirement age, again.
gamepsys 2y ago
Life is great, who wouldn't want more of it? I'm old enough to see some the advances in medical care different family members were able to receive when they became very ill over the decades. I'm young enough to be optimistic that when it's my turn the treatments available will be even more significant. There's a certain quality of life I wouldn't want to spend a prolonged time in. I understand your point about not wanting to be in bad health. Most of the activities I do that will likely prolong my life (diet, exercise, manage stress, build social bonds, supplements, pharmacology, screenings) will also increase my likelihood of prolonging the amount of time I have in good health. Why am I interested in living longer? I think it's better than the alternative.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  > I think it's better than the alternative. I mean, why? Longer lives are not necessarily any happier. In fact, old age seems pretty physically miserable.
  - gamepsys 2y ago
    There's miseries in all stages of life. I've known people that still enjoyed life into their 80s and even 90s. I'm not very afraid of being physical uncomfortable, and I enjoy being here enough to want to fight for more time.
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    This is personal and depends on your perspectives. Obviously the people who want to live longer don't share the same point of view as you. And it is ok, as long as you are not forced to adopt their point of view and vice-versa.
yieldcrv 2y ago
I don’t want to live longer with dementia I want the entire system to have longer maintenance and repair: skin smooth, head of hair, muscles not atrophied, bones not brittle, oxygenated blood circulating and keeping a brain well functioning without its own independent deterioration, risk of cancer mitigated, but also easily repairable if its occurring I look at the London borough checklist of what people died from in the 1600s, and it makes me optimistic that the things people currently die of will be solved I just don't want to be felled by those things. Its nice that solving for them includes a high probability of centenarian lifespans, I’m fine crossing that bridge when we get there.
pdimitar 2y ago
Why are you conflating long lifespan with miserable last 10-20 years of the life? I aspire to be like that French gym trainer who was in near-perfect health and an optimal presence of mind at 96 years old when he died suddenly (I think of heart attack).
elzbardico 2y ago
Nobody expects to live longer and have dementia. People are betting that they will escape that and there's a good probability that they will do. Not to mention that if you are around your 30s or 40s it would be terrible to not care about your general health just to find out in the next 10 or 20 years that science found a cure to dementia but now your body is too much fucked to take advantage of that.
- logifail 2y ago
  > Nobody expects to live longer and have dementia I think we can generalise that statement to "nobody expects to have dementia". Until you get it :/ There are people taking lots of vitamins, but with apologies to any vitamin-takers, that hypothesis seems to have been thoroughly debunked. For healthy adults, taking multivitamins daily is not associated with a lower risk of death https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/healthy-adults-taking-multivitamins-daily-not-associated-lower-risk-death https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/healthy-adults...
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    Living is risky, yeah, I know it. A lot of it is a fucking gamble, your profession, the place you decide to live, the people you enter relationships with. Nothing is assured. Yeah, maybe we will be all unemployable and miserable due to LLMs taking our jobs and failing to create others. Maybe we shouldn't have reproduced as our kids will never get to become adults due to a nuclear war or a fucking serious pandemic with a virus that will make SARS-COV-2 look like nothing. Who knows?
  - klingoff 2y ago
    Cabbage also doesn't work, but what does that have to do with a theory that: Metformin exerts a substantial neuroprotective effect, preserving brain structure and enhancing cognitive ability. We obviously want additions or replacements to physical and mental exercise depending on how much we get.
deleted 2y ago
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elzbardico 2y ago
I find life awesome. I truly fucking enjoy it. I am not rich, I can't retire and probably will never be able to do so, but I also enjoy my work even if not all the time. I think the world is moving towards a terrible inflexion point, I think we are in a fucking crisis right now, and still, fuck that. I don't want to leave this boat. Now that said, I completely accept that not everyone shares my point of view, and I also accept that probably I wouldn't understand their reasons for doing so. Maybe you should stop worrying about it. Some people would eagerly take any opportunity to live a few more years, it makes no sense to you, but it makes to them. It is not like they are forcing you to also live more than what you want.
- Unbeliever69 2y ago
  I totally get where you're coming from. I voluntarily left the workforce and now we live off my wife's income as a public school teacher. She’s got about 15 years until retirement, and while we’re not rich, we’re definitely comfortable. Surprisingly, we’ve managed to do better financially on a single income than we did with two. Leaving the traditional workforce was an easy decision for me. COVID had me working from home, and my startup didn’t make it through the pandemic—raising capital was tough. Once I experienced working from home, I knew I couldn’t go back to the office or work for anyone else. I feel the same way about retirement. While my wife supports us financially, I support her by managing the household. I take care of the pets, make her lunch, clean, help with her lessons and emails, and handle groceries and errands. I really enjoy this role. It frees me up to work on personal projects like novel-writing and developing a SaaS product I’m passionate about. I get a lot of satisfaction from making my wife’s life easier, especially since being an elementary school teacher is no walk in the park. Thanks to my support, she’s been able to raise over $60k for a unique program at her school in just two years. She’s sharing her success stories at conferences worldwide, and seeing her thrive makes me happy too. I’m not spending my time golfing or vacationing. I keep my mind sharp and enjoy the work I do. Yes, I worry about the future—like the fear of being so sick that I become a burden, and no, I don’t have enough saved up for that possibility. I feel like my generation (X) is in a tricky spot, but for now, I’m content.
rscho 2y ago
[flagged]
- dgfitz 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    What he is saying is true, doctors and everyone else involved try to squeeze as much money as possible from dying people.
    - rscho 2y ago
      I don't really have a comparative opinion about that. What I mean is that I've seen countless examples of US patients and docs willing to go to extremes of treatment that would be considered unreasonable elsewhere. But I was just a bloke in one big university hospital, so YMMV I guess. Still, the culture gap was pretty surprising.
  - asimovfan 2y ago
    What's fucked up about it? I didn't get it?
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      That American humans are more scared of dying than other humans. Almost seems… well…
      - homebrewer 2y ago
        Read "Being Mortal" and you might come around to a very different viewpoint.
        dgfitz 2y ago
        [flagged]
eqvinox 2y ago
"decelerates aging clock" implies slowing down processes of decreasing health, not just living longer in a frail state at the end. In particular if you click the link, the first thing it says is: • Metformin prevents brain atrophy, elevating cognitive function in aged male primates • Metformin slows the pace of aging across diverse male primate tissues • Metformin counterparts neuronal aging, delivering geroprotection via Nrf2 in male primates It doesn't even say you'd live longer. If I could get something that doesn't extend my life at all, just keeps my brain fresher into my old age, I would jump on that as well.
inglor_cz 2y ago
People are interested in slowing aging, which means living longer in good health. The ultimate goal would be negligible senescence. Dementia and other chronic diseases that plague our end days now are consequences of aging. They don't just come randomly, they are a result of the aging process, which is nothing but slow deterioration, possibly a programmed one. Of course people want to get rid of that.
desireco42 2y ago
I think you are looking at this the wrong way. I turned 50 recently. I have ADHD and I was fairly immature for a long time. I finally understand so much about life, I genuinely am helping a lot of people and to be honest, want to continue living and enjoying life. There are so many books to read, experiences to have. Yet I can feel that my body is no longer how it used to be. If there was something that could bring back to clock, 5-10 extra years. Totally worth it.
StanislavPetrov 2y ago
I certainly wouldn't want to live forever one way or the other, but most people who talk about living longer mean slowing or halting the aging process, not simply surviving more years as a decaying husk.
jjk166 2y ago
Your Father and Father-in-laws conditions are due to the process of aging, not the number of years they have lived. It is the process of aging which anti-aging advocates want to delay or eliminate. Living longer doesn't mean tacking on years at the end, continuing the aging process for longer; it means adding years to the middle before aging begins, as well as lessening the effects of aging when that time eventually comes.
monkeyfun 2y ago
To flip your question around, why are you living right now? I developed a severe intestinal disorder in my 20s. Some people can get it or ones like it in their teens, others their 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. and many won't ever develop such issues, although they're reasonably common to a less severe extreme than my case. Knowing this, and that I could explain my disorder for years being debilitating and putting me in agonizing pain and suffering, why would you want to live any longer when it could happen to you too? Not everyone is going to develop such cognitive disorders as you discuss, and often they're a result of complex genetic and lifestyle factors, as well as likely having to do with aspects of aging like reduced function of organs. So it's quite possible these diseases and disorders aren't inevitable simply as a consequence of living long enough, or could be treated and reversed as medical science advances. If I sound bitter by the way, I am slightly, but do mean for this to still be conveyed productively. To hear someone asking "why are people interested in living longer?" makes me genuinely want to know why you're interested in living longer. You could die right now and free up resources for the rest of us, or donate resources to younger people than you who are in need, or simply give it to me since I'm neither senile nor old (not even 30) nor have a family history of such disorders as you mentioned, nor would I put it to poor use. I suspect you want to live. The simple fact is, it's that same desire to live and to continue enjoying life to the fullest that makes those of us with foresight interested in prolonging our healthy lives.
- washadjeffmad 2y ago
  The greatest challenge of chronic pain isn't necessarily the pain, but how it warps and taints parts of you beyond your control. People who haven't experienced their failure are completely unaware of the incredible mechanisms of our evolution that keep us from suicide. They're also unaware of what choosing to live means in the face of the eventual erosion of those failsafes by pain. It's like hurtling down the interstate at 70mph in heavy traffic and having the power steering go out. There's no sense of freedom and accomplishment in having to fight just to keep to your lane, only terror from all the parts of you that know how easily you'd crash if you stopped trying for even a few seconds. It's exhausting in every sense.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]

barrucadu 2y ago

Obviously the idea is to live longer with good mental and physical health. There's no point in living longer if your faculties are too degraded to enjoy it, you may as well just be dead.

Jach 2y ago
I guess it's not so obvious if GP is the top comment. It seems broader messaging around anti-aging needs to be even better (nothing against the paper). Sometimes I like the jargon of negligible senescence and longevity escape velocity, because I don't think it's possible to know the meaning of those phrases and also think the goal is eking out as much substandard life as possible, so if you can't have a two-way conversation at least you can put in a semantic roadblock that invites a curious reader to look up the meaning and then not have the GP's question.

ceejayoz 2y ago

I mean, we want to live longer and not get dementia. I wanna know what happens. I want to download my brain into a computer and see what humanity does over the next couple million years.

highwaylights 2y ago
Even if that were possible, and theoretically we could take the entirety of a person's brain and emulate every synapse into digital storage, along with enough compute to run everything (which is a massive hurdle to overcome), would it really still be you? I kind of think about it a bit like the transporter deck from Star Trek. Are those people really travelling somewhere else or are they getting cloned and then done like Hugh Jackman at the end of The Prestige? How would anyone even know? A computer simulated you would seem like you to everyone else, but you'd already be gone.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > How would anyone even know? If no one can ever know, I'm not sure I care. Transport me to cool places all you like.
- incongruity 2y ago
  Worse, still, unless the current me blinks out of existence, "old me" will still be around - unless we can replace neurons in-place with computational analogs, the original me is destined to die, almost no matter what, even if a copy/download is made. From the download's perspective, it continues, but the original, if not ended then and there, still faces a grim end and will know it.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    If painless (or I don't remember it), I'm 100% fine with a fairly speedy destructive upload process.
    - highwaylights 2y ago
      You won't remember it as you'll cease to exist at all is the point.
      - ceejayoz 2y ago
        My consciousness gets interrupted on a nightly basis. One more will be fine.

rileymat2 2y ago

I am not sure if it would map to dementia, but: > The results highlighted a significant slowing of aging indicators, notably a roughly 6-year regression in brain aging. And some people call Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes. So there could be something protective?

transitionnel 2y ago
Diabetes causes rupturing of small blood vessels, which has been seen in eyes and feet. It would follow that the same is happening in the brain and an anti-diabetic medicine would directly improve brain longevity in affected individuals. *I am not a doctor, but also I can correlate data without bias.

non- 2y ago

The exciting thing about these findings is not that the monkey's live longer, it's that their brains aged slower. --- Highlights: • Metformin prevents brain atrophy, elevating cognitive function in aged male primates • Metformin slows the pace of aging across diverse male primate tissues • Metformin counterparts neuronal aging, delivering geroprotection via Nrf2 in male primates

iwontberude 2y ago
• Metformin-associated lactic acidosis has an estimated death rate of up to 50%.
- giardini 2y ago
  So... don't overdose?
  - iwontberude 2y ago
    It can build up over time and requires regular blood work.

tempestn 2y ago

As others said, obviously the goal is to live longer in good health. As for why, because.. I like living. Why would I not want to do it for longer?

dangus 2y ago

People want more healthy years.

logifail 2y ago
> People want more healthy years ...but that doesn't really answer why, does it? To "do more stuff"? To "see more things"? To "earn more money"? To "learn more"? Why? A friend wasn't enjoying her job a year or two ago and said she felt seriously underpaid for the stuff she was being asked to handle. I asked her if she would feel any happier if they doubled or tripled her salary. After thinking about it she realised the amount of money wouldn't fix the problem, the issue was with the work environment, not the monetary package tagged on to her employment. Life is finite. So at least for all of us who don't have some desperately unkind medical issue that specifically shortens it, maybe we need to take a deep breath and learn to deal with that. "Carpe diem", and all that.
- jjk166 2y ago
  > To "do more stuff"? To "see more things"? To "earn more money"? To "learn more"? Why? Yes, to all of it. Life will still be finite with a longer life, but more is more. If offered the opportunity to have your lifespan shortened for no gain would you take it? Obviously not, and likewise if you have the opportunity to increase your lifespan for no cost, it's exactly the same decision.
- dangus 2y ago
  Learning to deal with mortality and wanting more healthy years are not mutually exclusive. I can’t really think of any downside to having more healthy years. Yeah, do more stuff, see more things, learn more. Why? Because it’s enjoyable. And why do I need a reason?

switchbak 2y ago

The people in this space talk a lot about not just life span, but health span. I don't know anyone who wants to suffer for a long time, of course we'd want to live well. I know for myself, I'd love to be around to watch my kids grow up. Even better if I can do that while being old-man jacked and physically capable enough to still enjoy life. I don't think this has to mean that you're putting off enjoying life in the current moment though. It seems like a funny question to ask who's "interested in living longer"? Taken to an extreme that's a pretty depression question.

a13n 2y ago
Survival instinct is deeply hard wired into all animals, including humans. It's natural to want to continue living. Anti-aging is picking up now because there's a growing belief that significantly extending the healthy human lifespan is within scientific/technological reach.
- logifail 2y ago
  > Survival instinct is deeply hard wired into all animals, including humans. Survive and reproduce... So if/when one has the reproduction bit out that of the way, the survival bit as such may not seem to be quite as vital. You know your genes are going to survive, meaning you don't personally have to. Which is the whole point of evolution, right?
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    "Which is the whole point of evolution, right?" Pretty much the entire point of civilization is not to be at the mercy of natural forces, including evolution.
    - logifail 2y ago
      > Pretty much the entire point of civilization is not to be at the mercy of natural forces, including evolution The parent to my comment did bring up "survival instinct" (!)

mullingitover 2y ago

The bigger problem with extending lifespans beyond what evolution has optimized for is that you end up competing against your offspring for resources, and you give pathogens a non-moving genetic target to attack (which defeats the whole point of sexual reproduction).

inglor_cz 2y ago
"you end up competing against your offspring for resources" This was relevant in the pre-agriculture era. We already live in densities several orders of magnitude higher than evolution optimized us for. I am more concerned about the somewhat artificial societal resources, such as top jobs. We might get a very ossified elite. We almost saw a presidential election with two ancient guys competing. With longevity widespread, this may become a pattern. "you give pathogens a non-moving genetic target to attack" True, but we generally try to manage new infectious diseases by scientific means, not by "0.6 per cent of population is resistant to this, let the rest croak". See: AIDS, Covid.
- mullingitover 2y ago
  > This was relevant in the pre-agriculture era. We already live in densities several orders of magnitude higher than evolution optimized us for. I mean, keep in mind that we're living in a snapshot of time that's very much not stable or sustainable. It's like we're all embers born in a massive forest fire that started a few days ago. Everything seems normal and stable for us in this situation because our frame of reference is effectively a few seconds. However, this forest fire will eventually consume all the available fuel and things will return to baseline, no matter how hard we fantasize that we're going to somehow spread the forest fire to other planets. Any temporary victories we've made over evolution are just that. We've already seen how absolutely vicious pathogens can be toward monoculture biomasses. Just ask the Gros Michel banana.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    Yeah, of course tomorrow a global plague may eradicate us all, or "all except Sentinelese people". Nevertheless, looking at our prehistory, the worst bottleneck of the human race was probably some 900 thousand years ago, way, way before we had anything resembling civilization. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancestors-may-have-almost-died-out-ancient-population-crash.html https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancest... So, at least for me, the question of whether we are more resilient as civilization vs. as primitive people in their pristine state, is very much open. Too many people seem to be sure that going with the natural flow is long-term better. But it feels a bit like the Noble Savage myth reiterated for current sensibilities.

fnordpiglet 2y ago

I care more about being healthier longer. And I’d like that to last as long as I can and not a lot longer necessarily. It’s because I love life because it’s life, and wouldn’t mind if it went on for a long time. I could learn so many things. But, even if it’s 60 years I want them to be healthy. So I do the things I am supposed to to age more slowly because aging is causative to ill health. My things I do is eat reasonable amounts of healthy food and exercise regularly. I supplement a few things like magnesium and taurine, that I specifically do better taking than not. But if they came out with a “never age until you die” pill I would take it immediately. But I think you’re confusing long life with long health span. I don’t think anyone dreams of living a long full life is hellish degenerative ill health.

riehwvfbk 2y ago
So who will pay for your long healthy life? The default answer is: you will, by working longer. Any other answer has this problem: why is this magic source of funds not currently available to cover even our current shorter lifespans? OK, so we've established that you have to continue working. Are you sure that you as a geriatric man on artificial life extension will be competitive with a younger guy who can go crazy and use the same tech to, say, never sleep - never mind that he'll die at 40? And even if we aren't talking extremes: you as a pill-supported walking corpse have to be ever vigilant of your own mortality. Someone younger can afford to take more risks.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  Your argument is easily applied to all medical advancements, do you think we should stop using antibiotics? Vaccines? Maybe you should let the individuals determine what's best for themselves instead to trying to prescribe your strange anti capitalism ideology for them. Anyway medical research is focused on giving us on better quality of life as we age, which is what people objectively value, not whatever you think they are trying to do.
  - logifail 2y ago
    > Anyway medical research is focused on giving us on better quality of life as we age Polite correction: medical research is focussed on returns for those funding said research. Treating Americans is definitely a cash-cow for Big Pharma, indeed if a potential new drug can't/won't make it past the FDA then it will likely be killed off regardless of what the rest of the world might want/need/approve. Check out US healthcare spend per capita compared with everywhere else on the planet. (Source: friend in Big Pharma)

willcipriano 2y ago

Are you the sort of person who feels life is awesome? Knowing the name of a assisted suicide company off the top of your head seems to suggest not. If you were, why would you want that to end?

riehwvfbk 2y ago

The people who want to extend their lives are the ones whose lives tend to be pretty good. The CEO plotting world domination kind of archetype. The rest of us are expected to be expendable biorobots who serve them. Unfortunately, this won't play out the way their fantasies tell them. The rich and powerful will be trapped by the need to always maintain their fragile lives. This in turn will slow down progress and open up the gates to a younger and more daring group to come to power.

datavirtue 2y ago
This is true. Shifting a populations life expectancy up to suspend biological aging would be a panic moment for most governments that are tied to huge benefit systems based on age. Good luck changing the retirement age, again.

gamepsys 2y ago

Life is great, who wouldn't want more of it? I'm old enough to see some the advances in medical care different family members were able to receive when they became very ill over the decades. I'm young enough to be optimistic that when it's my turn the treatments available will be even more significant. There's a certain quality of life I wouldn't want to spend a prolonged time in. I understand your point about not wanting to be in bad health. Most of the activities I do that will likely prolong my life (diet, exercise, manage stress, build social bonds, supplements, pharmacology, screenings) will also increase my likelihood of prolonging the amount of time I have in good health. Why am I interested in living longer? I think it's better than the alternative.

darby_nine 2y ago
> I think it's better than the alternative. I mean, why? Longer lives are not necessarily any happier. In fact, old age seems pretty physically miserable.
- gamepsys 2y ago
  There's miseries in all stages of life. I've known people that still enjoyed life into their 80s and even 90s. I'm not very afraid of being physical uncomfortable, and I enjoy being here enough to want to fight for more time.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  This is personal and depends on your perspectives. Obviously the people who want to live longer don't share the same point of view as you. And it is ok, as long as you are not forced to adopt their point of view and vice-versa.

yieldcrv 2y ago

I don’t want to live longer with dementia I want the entire system to have longer maintenance and repair: skin smooth, head of hair, muscles not atrophied, bones not brittle, oxygenated blood circulating and keeping a brain well functioning without its own independent deterioration, risk of cancer mitigated, but also easily repairable if its occurring I look at the London borough checklist of what people died from in the 1600s, and it makes me optimistic that the things people currently die of will be solved I just don't want to be felled by those things. Its nice that solving for them includes a high probability of centenarian lifespans, I’m fine crossing that bridge when we get there.

pdimitar 2y ago

Why are you conflating long lifespan with miserable last 10-20 years of the life? I aspire to be like that French gym trainer who was in near-perfect health and an optimal presence of mind at 96 years old when he died suddenly (I think of heart attack).

elzbardico 2y ago

Nobody expects to live longer and have dementia. People are betting that they will escape that and there's a good probability that they will do. Not to mention that if you are around your 30s or 40s it would be terrible to not care about your general health just to find out in the next 10 or 20 years that science found a cure to dementia but now your body is too much fucked to take advantage of that.

logifail 2y ago
> Nobody expects to live longer and have dementia I think we can generalise that statement to "nobody expects to have dementia". Until you get it :/ There are people taking lots of vitamins, but with apologies to any vitamin-takers, that hypothesis seems to have been thoroughly debunked. For healthy adults, taking multivitamins daily is not associated with a lower risk of death https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/healthy-adults-taking-multivitamins-daily-not-associated-lower-risk-death https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/healthy-adults...
- elzbardico 2y ago
  Living is risky, yeah, I know it. A lot of it is a fucking gamble, your profession, the place you decide to live, the people you enter relationships with. Nothing is assured. Yeah, maybe we will be all unemployable and miserable due to LLMs taking our jobs and failing to create others. Maybe we shouldn't have reproduced as our kids will never get to become adults due to a nuclear war or a fucking serious pandemic with a virus that will make SARS-COV-2 look like nothing. Who knows?
- klingoff 2y ago
  Cabbage also doesn't work, but what does that have to do with a theory that: Metformin exerts a substantial neuroprotective effect, preserving brain structure and enhancing cognitive ability. We obviously want additions or replacements to physical and mental exercise depending on how much we get.

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elzbardico 2y ago

I find life awesome. I truly fucking enjoy it. I am not rich, I can't retire and probably will never be able to do so, but I also enjoy my work even if not all the time. I think the world is moving towards a terrible inflexion point, I think we are in a fucking crisis right now, and still, fuck that. I don't want to leave this boat. Now that said, I completely accept that not everyone shares my point of view, and I also accept that probably I wouldn't understand their reasons for doing so. Maybe you should stop worrying about it. Some people would eagerly take any opportunity to live a few more years, it makes no sense to you, but it makes to them. It is not like they are forcing you to also live more than what you want.

Unbeliever69 2y ago
I totally get where you're coming from. I voluntarily left the workforce and now we live off my wife's income as a public school teacher. She’s got about 15 years until retirement, and while we’re not rich, we’re definitely comfortable. Surprisingly, we’ve managed to do better financially on a single income than we did with two. Leaving the traditional workforce was an easy decision for me. COVID had me working from home, and my startup didn’t make it through the pandemic—raising capital was tough. Once I experienced working from home, I knew I couldn’t go back to the office or work for anyone else. I feel the same way about retirement. While my wife supports us financially, I support her by managing the household. I take care of the pets, make her lunch, clean, help with her lessons and emails, and handle groceries and errands. I really enjoy this role. It frees me up to work on personal projects like novel-writing and developing a SaaS product I’m passionate about. I get a lot of satisfaction from making my wife’s life easier, especially since being an elementary school teacher is no walk in the park. Thanks to my support, she’s been able to raise over $60k for a unique program at her school in just two years. She’s sharing her success stories at conferences worldwide, and seeing her thrive makes me happy too. I’m not spending my time golfing or vacationing. I keep my mind sharp and enjoy the work I do. Yes, I worry about the future—like the fear of being so sick that I become a burden, and no, I don’t have enough saved up for that possibility. I feel like my generation (X) is in a tricky spot, but for now, I’m content.

rscho 2y ago

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dgfitz 2y ago
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- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  What he is saying is true, doctors and everyone else involved try to squeeze as much money as possible from dying people.
  - rscho 2y ago
    I don't really have a comparative opinion about that. What I mean is that I've seen countless examples of US patients and docs willing to go to extremes of treatment that would be considered unreasonable elsewhere. But I was just a bloke in one big university hospital, so YMMV I guess. Still, the culture gap was pretty surprising.
- asimovfan 2y ago
  What's fucked up about it? I didn't get it?
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    That American humans are more scared of dying than other humans. Almost seems… well…
    - homebrewer 2y ago
      Read "Being Mortal" and you might come around to a very different viewpoint.
      - dgfitz 2y ago
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eqvinox 2y ago

"decelerates aging clock" implies slowing down processes of decreasing health, not just living longer in a frail state at the end. In particular if you click the link, the first thing it says is: • Metformin prevents brain atrophy, elevating cognitive function in aged male primates • Metformin slows the pace of aging across diverse male primate tissues • Metformin counterparts neuronal aging, delivering geroprotection via Nrf2 in male primates It doesn't even say you'd live longer. If I could get something that doesn't extend my life at all, just keeps my brain fresher into my old age, I would jump on that as well.

inglor_cz 2y ago

People are interested in slowing aging, which means living longer in good health. The ultimate goal would be negligible senescence. Dementia and other chronic diseases that plague our end days now are consequences of aging. They don't just come randomly, they are a result of the aging process, which is nothing but slow deterioration, possibly a programmed one. Of course people want to get rid of that.

desireco42 2y ago

I think you are looking at this the wrong way. I turned 50 recently. I have ADHD and I was fairly immature for a long time. I finally understand so much about life, I genuinely am helping a lot of people and to be honest, want to continue living and enjoying life. There are so many books to read, experiences to have. Yet I can feel that my body is no longer how it used to be. If there was something that could bring back to clock, 5-10 extra years. Totally worth it.

StanislavPetrov 2y ago

I certainly wouldn't want to live forever one way or the other, but most people who talk about living longer mean slowing or halting the aging process, not simply surviving more years as a decaying husk.

jjk166 2y ago

Your Father and Father-in-laws conditions are due to the process of aging, not the number of years they have lived. It is the process of aging which anti-aging advocates want to delay or eliminate. Living longer doesn't mean tacking on years at the end, continuing the aging process for longer; it means adding years to the middle before aging begins, as well as lessening the effects of aging when that time eventually comes.

monkeyfun 2y ago

To flip your question around, why are you living right now? I developed a severe intestinal disorder in my 20s. Some people can get it or ones like it in their teens, others their 30s, 40s, 50s, etc. and many won't ever develop such issues, although they're reasonably common to a less severe extreme than my case. Knowing this, and that I could explain my disorder for years being debilitating and putting me in agonizing pain and suffering, why would you want to live any longer when it could happen to you too? Not everyone is going to develop such cognitive disorders as you discuss, and often they're a result of complex genetic and lifestyle factors, as well as likely having to do with aspects of aging like reduced function of organs. So it's quite possible these diseases and disorders aren't inevitable simply as a consequence of living long enough, or could be treated and reversed as medical science advances. If I sound bitter by the way, I am slightly, but do mean for this to still be conveyed productively. To hear someone asking "why are people interested in living longer?" makes me genuinely want to know why you're interested in living longer. You could die right now and free up resources for the rest of us, or donate resources to younger people than you who are in need, or simply give it to me since I'm neither senile nor old (not even 30) nor have a family history of such disorders as you mentioned, nor would I put it to poor use. I suspect you want to live. The simple fact is, it's that same desire to live and to continue enjoying life to the fullest that makes those of us with foresight interested in prolonging our healthy lives.

washadjeffmad 2y ago
The greatest challenge of chronic pain isn't necessarily the pain, but how it warps and taints parts of you beyond your control. People who haven't experienced their failure are completely unaware of the incredible mechanisms of our evolution that keep us from suicide. They're also unaware of what choosing to live means in the face of the eventual erosion of those failsafes by pain. It's like hurtling down the interstate at 70mph in heavy traffic and having the power steering go out. There's no sense of freedom and accomplishment in having to fight just to keep to your lane, only terror from all the parts of you that know how easily you'd crash if you stopped trying for even a few seconds. It's exhausting in every sense.

aaron695 2y ago

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